[English Novel] Me Before You

Me Before You
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Patrick had lost interest. ‘Hey, Jim … Jim, did you take a look at that new lightweight bike? Any good?’

I let him change the subject, thinking about what Alicia had said. I could well imagine Will pushing her away. But surely if you loved someone it was your job to stick with them? To help them through the depression? In sickness and in health, and all that?

‘Another drink?’

‘Vodka tonic. Slimline tonic,’ I said, as he raised an eyebrow.

Patrick shrugged and headed to the bar.

I had started to feel a little guilty about the way we were discussing my employer. Especially when I realized that he probably endured it all the time. It was almost impossible not to speculate about the more intimate aspects of his life. I tuned out. There was talk of a training weekend in Spain. I was only listening with half an ear, until Patrick reappeared at my side and nudged me.

‘Fancy it?’

‘What?’

‘Weekend in Spain. Instead of the Greek holiday. You could put your feet up by the pool if you don’t fancy the forty-mile bike ride. We could get cheap flights. Six weeks’ time. Now you’re rolling in it … ’

I thought of Mrs Traynor. ‘I don’t know … I’m not sure they’re going to be keen on me taking time off so soon.’

‘You mind if I go, then? I really fancy getting some altitude training in. I’m thinking about doing the big one.’

‘The big what?’

‘Triathlon. The Xtreme Viking. Sixty miles on a bike, thirty miles on foot, and a nice long swim in sub-zero Nordic seas.’

The Viking was spoken about with reverence, those who had competed bearing their injuries like veterans of some distant and particularly brutal war. He was almost smacking his lips with anticipation. I looked at my boyfriend and wondered if he was actually an alien. I thought briefly that I had preferred him when he worked in telesales and couldn’t pass a petrol station without stocking up on Mars Bars.

‘You’re going to do it?’

‘Why not? I’ve never been fitter.’

I thought of all that extra training – the endless conversations about weight and distance, fitness and endurance. It was hard enough getting Patrick’s attention these days at the best of times.

‘You could do it with me,’ he said, although we both knew he didn’t believe it.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I said. ‘Sure. Go for it,’ I said.

And I ordered the cheesecake.

If I had thought the events of the previous day would create a thaw back at Granta House, I was wrong.

I greeted Will with a broad smile and a cheery hello, and he didn’t even bother to look round from the window.

‘Not a good day,’ Nathan murmured, as he shouldered his way into his coat.

It was a filthy, low-cloud sort of a morning, where the rain spat meanly against the windows and it was hard to imagine the sun coming out ever again. Even I felt glum on a day like this. It wasn’t really a surprise that Will should be worse. I began to work my way through the morning’s chores, telling myself all the while that it didn’t matter. You didn’t have to like your employer anyway, did you? Lots of people didn’t. I thought of Treena’s boss, a taut-faced serial divorcee who monitored how many times my sister went to the loo and had been known to make barbed comments if she considered her to have exceeded reasonable bladder activity. And besides, I had already done two weeks here. That meant there were only five months and thirteen working days to go.

The photographs were stacked carefully in the bottom drawer, where I had placed them the previous day, and now, crouched on the floor, I began laying them out and sorting through them, assessing which frames I might be able to fix. I am quite good at fixing things. Besides, I thought it might be quite a useful way of killing time.

I had been doing this for about ten minutes when the discreet hum of the motorized wheelchair alerted me to Will’s arrival.

He sat there in the doorway, looking at me. There were dark shadows under his eyes. Sometimes, Nathan told me, he barely slept at all. I didn’t want to think how it would feel, to lie trapped in a bed you couldn’t get out of with only dark thoughts to keep you company through the small hours.

‘I thought I’d see if I could fix any of these frames,’ I said, holding one up. It was the picture of him bungee jumping. I tried to look cheerful. He needs someone upbeat, someone positive.

‘Why?’

I blinked. ‘Well … I think some of these can be saved. I brought some wood glue with me, if you’re happy for me to have a go at them. Or if you want to replace them I can pop into town during my lunch break and see if I can find some more. Or we could both go, if you fancied a trip out … ’

‘Who told you to start fixing them?’

His stare was unflinching.

Uh-oh, I thought. ‘I … I was just trying to help.’

‘You wanted to fix what I did yesterday.’

‘I –’

‘Do you know what, Louisa? It would be nice – just for once – if someone paid attention to what I wanted. Me smashing those photographs was not an accident. It was not an attempt at radical interior design. It was because I actually don’t want to look at them.’

I got to my feet. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think that –’

‘You thought you knew best. Everyone thinks they know what I need. Let’s put the bloody photos back together. Give the poor invalid something to look at. I don’t want to have those bloody pictures staring at me every time I’m stuck in my bed until someone comes and bloody well gets me out again. Okay? Do you think you can get your head around that?’

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I swallowed. ‘I wasn’t going to fix the one of Alicia – I’m not that stupid … I just thought that in a while you might feel –’

‘Oh Christ … ’ He turned away from me, his voice scathing. ‘Spare me the psychological therapy. Just go and read your bloody gossip magazines or whatever it is you do when you’re not making tea.’

My cheeks were aflame. I watched him manoeuvre in the narrow hallway, and my voice emerged even before I knew what I was doing.

‘You don’t have to behave like an arse.’

The words rang out in the still air.

The wheelchair stopped. There was a long pause, and then he reversed and turned slowly, so that he was facing me, his hand on the little joystick.

‘What?’

I faced him, my heart thumping. ‘Your friends got the ****ty treatment. Fine. They probably deserved it. But I’m just here day after day trying to do the best job I can. So I would really appreciate it if you didn’t make my life as unpleasant as you do everyone else’s.’

Will’s eyes widened a little. There was a beat before he spoke again. ‘And what if I told you I didn’t want you here?’

‘I’m not employed by you. I’m employed by your mother. And unless she tells me she doesn’t want me here any more I’m staying. Not because I particularly care about you, or like this stupid job or want to change your life one way or another, but because I need the money. Okay? I really need the money.’

Will Traynor’s expression hadn’t outwardly changed much but I thought I saw astonishment in there, as if he were unused to anyone disagreeing with him.

Oh hell, I thought, as the reality of what I had just done began to sink in. I’ve really blown it this time.

But Will just stared at me for a bit and, when I didn’t look away, he let out a small breath, as if about to say something unpleasant.

‘Fair enough,’ he said, and he turned the wheelchair round. ‘Just put the photographs in the bottom drawer, will you? All of them.’

And with a low hum, he was gone.

5

The thing about being catapulted into a whole new life – or at least, shoved up so hard against someone else’s life that you might as well have your face pressed against their window – is that it forces you to rethink your idea of who you are. Or how you might seem to other people.

To my parents, I had in four short weeks become just a few degrees more interesting. I was now the conduit to a different world. My mother, in particular, asked me daily questions about Granta House and its domestic habits in the manner of a zoologist forensically examining some strange new creature and its habitat. ‘Does Mrs Traynor use linen napkins at every meal?’ she would ask, or ‘Do you think they vacuum every day, like we do?’ or, ‘What do they do with their potatoes?’

She sent me off in the mornings with strict instructions to find out what brand of loo roll they used, or whether the sheets were a polycotton mix. It was a source of great disappointment to her that most of the time I couldn’t actually remember. My mother was secretly convinced that posh people lived like pigs – ever since I had told her, aged six, of a well-spoken school friend whose mother wouldn’t let us play in their front room ‘because we’d disturb the dust’.

When I came home to report that, yes, the dog was definitely allowed to eat in the kitchen, or that, no, the Traynors didn’t scrub their front step every day as my mother did, she would purse her lips, glance sideways at my father and nod with quiet satisfaction, as if I had just confirmed everything she’d suspected about the slovenly ways of the upper classes.

Their dependence on my income, or perhaps the fact that they knew I didn’t really like my job, meant that I also received a little more respect within the house. This didn’t actually translate to much – in my Dad’s case, it meant that he had stopped calling me ‘lardarse’ and, in my mother’s, that there was usually a mug of tea waiting for me when I came home.

To Patrick, and to my sister, I was no different – still the butt of jokes, the recipient of hugs or kisses or sulks. I felt no different. I still looked the same, still dressed, according to Treen, like I had had a wrestling match in a charity shop.

I had no idea what most of the inhabitants of Granta House thought of me. Will was unreadable. To Nathan, I suspected I was just the latest in a long line of hired carers. He was friendly enough, but a bit semi-detached. I got the feeling he wasn’t convinced I was going to be there for long. Mr Traynor nodded at me politely when we passed in the hall, occasionally asking me how the traffic was, or whether I had settled in all right. I’m not sure he would have recognized me if he’d been introduced to me in another setting.

But to Mrs Traynor – oh Lord – to Mrs Traynor I was apparently the stupidest and most irresponsible person on the planet.

It had started with the photo frames. Nothing in that house escaped Mrs Traynor’s notice, and I should have known that the smashing of the frames would qualify as a seismic event. She quizzed me as to exactly how long I had left Will alone, what had prompted it, how swiftly I had cleared the mess up. She didn’t actually criticize me – she was too genteel even to raise her voice – but the way she blinked slowly at my responses, her little hmm-hmm, as I spoke, told me everything I needed to know. It came as no surprise when Nathan told me she was a magistrate.

She thought it might be a good idea if I didn’t leave Will for so long next time, no matter how awkward the situation, hmm? She thought perhaps the next time I dusted I could make sure things weren’t close enough to the edge so that they might accidentally get knocked to the floor, hmm? (She seemed to prefer to believe that it had been an accident.) She made me feel like a first-class eejit, and consequently I became a first-class eejit around her. She always arrived just when I had dropped something on the floor, or was struggling with the cooker dial, or she would be standing in the hallway looking mildly irritated as I stepped back in from collecting logs outside, as if I had been gone much longer than I actually had.

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Weirdly, her attitude got to me more than Will’s rudeness. A couple of times I had even been tempted to ask her outright whether there was something wrong. You said that you were hiring me for my attitude rather than my professional skills, I wanted to say. Well, here I am, being cheery every ruddy day. Being robust, just as you wanted. So what’s your problem?

But Camilla Traynor was not the kind of woman you could have said that to. And besides, I got the feeling nobody in that house ever said anything direct to anyone else.

‘Lily, our last girl, had rather a clever habit of using that pan for two vegetables at once,’ meant You’re making too much mess.

‘Perhaps you’d like a cup of tea, Will,’ actually meant I have no idea what to say to you.

‘I think I’ve got some paperwork that needs sorting out,’ meant You’re being rude, and I’m going to leave the room.

All pronounced with that slightly pained expression, and the slender fingers running up and down the chain with the crucifix. She was so held in, so restrained. She made my own mother look like Amy Winehouse. I smiled politely, pretended I hadn’t noticed, and did the job I was paid to do.

Or at least, I tried.

‘Why the hell are you trying to sneak carrots on to my fork?’

I glanced down at the plate. I had been watching the female television presenter and wondering what my hair would look like dyed the same colour.

‘Uh? I didn’t.’

‘You did. You mashed them up and tried to hide them in the gravy. I saw you.’

I blushed. He was right. I was sitting feeding Will, while both of us vaguely watched the lunchtime news. The meal was roast beef with mashed potato. His mother had told me to put three sorts of vegetables on the plate, even though he had said quite clearly that he didn’t want vegetables that day. I don’t think there was a meal that I was instructed to prepare that wasn’t nutritionally balanced to within an inch of its life.

‘Why are you trying to sneak carrots into me?’

‘I’m not.’

‘So there are no carrots on that?’

I gazed at the tiny pieces of orange. ‘Well … okay … ’

He was waiting, eyebrows raised.

‘Um … I suppose I thought vegetables would be good for you?’

It was part deference to Mrs Traynor, part force of habit. I was so used to feeding Thomas, whose vegetables had to be mashed to a paste and hidden under mounds of potato, or secreted in bits of pasta. Every fragment we got past him felt like a little victory.

‘Let me get this straight. You think a teaspoon of carrot would improve my quality of life?’

It was pretty stupid when he put it like that. But I had learnt it was important not to look cowed by anything Will said or did.

‘I take your point,’ I said evenly. ‘I won’t do it again.’

And then, out of nowhere, Will Traynor laughed. It exploded out of him in a gasp, as if it were entirely unexpected.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ he shook his head.

I stared at him.

‘What the hell else have you been sneaking into my food? You’ll be telling me to open the tunnel so that Mr Train can deliver some mushy Brussel sprouts to the red bloody station next.’

I considered this for a minute. ‘No,’ I said, straight-faced. ‘I deal only with Mr Fork. Mr Fork does not look like a train.’

Thomas had told me so, very firmly, some months previously.

‘Did my mother put you up to this?’

‘No. Look, Will, I’m sorry. I just … wasn’t thinking.’

‘Like that’s unusual.’

‘All right, all right. I’ll take the bloody carrots off, if they really upset you so much.’

‘It’s not the bloody carrots that upset me. It’s having them sneaked into my food by a madwoman who addresses the cutlery as Mr and Mrs Fork.’

‘It was a joke. Look, let me take the carrots and –’

He turned away from me. ‘I don’t want anything else. Just do me a cup of tea.’ He called out after me as I left the room, ‘And don’t try and sneak a bloody courgette into it.’

Nathan walked in as I was finishing the dishes. ‘He’s in a good mood,’ he said, as I handed him a mug.

‘Is he?’ I was eating my sandwiches in the kitchen. It was bitterly cold outside, and somehow the house hadn’t felt quite as unfriendly lately.

‘He says you’re trying to poison him. But he said it – you know – in a good way.’

I felt weirdly pleased by this information.

‘Yes … well … ’ I said, trying to hide it. ‘Give me time.’

‘He’s talking a bit more too. We’ve had weeks where he would hardly say a thing, but he’s definitely up for a bit of a chat the last few days.’

I thought of Will telling me if I didn’t stop bloody whistling he’d be forced to run me over. ‘I think his definition of chatty and mine are a bit different.’

‘Well, we had a bit of a chat about the cricket. And I gotta tell you –’ Nathan dropped his voice ‘– Mrs T asked me a week or so back if I thought you were doing okay. I said I thought you were very professional, but I knew that wasn’t what she meant. Then yesterday she came in and told me she’d heard you guys laughing.’

I thought back to the previous evening. ‘He was laughing at me,’ I said. Will had found it hilarious that I didn’t know what pesto was. I had told him supper was ‘the pasta in the green gravy’.

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‘Ah, she doesn’t care about that. It’s just been a long time since he laughed at anything.’

It was true. Will and I seemed to have found an easier way of being around each other. It revolved mainly around him being rude to me, and me occasionally being rude back. He told me I did something badly, and I told him if it really mattered to him then he could ask me nicely. He swore at me, or called me a pain in the backside, and I told him he should try being without this particular pain in the backside and see how far it got him. It was a bit forced but it seemed to work for both of us. Sometimes it even seemed like a relief to him that there was someone prepared to be rude to him, to contradict him or tell him he was being horrible. I got the feeling that everyone had tiptoed around him since his accident – apart from perhaps Nathan, who Will seemed to treat with an automatic respect, and who was probably impervious to any of his sharper comments anyway. Nathan was like an armoured vehicle in human form.

‘You just make sure you’re the butt of more of his jokes, okay?’

I put my mug in the sink. ‘I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.’

The other big change, apart from atmospheric con***ions inside the house, was that Will didn’t ask me to leave him alone quite as often, and a couple of afternoons had even asked me if I wanted to stay and watch a film with him. I hadn’t minded too much when it was The Terminator – even though I have seen all the Terminator films – but when he showed me the French film with subtitles, I took a quick look at the cover and said I thought I’d probably give it a miss.

‘Why?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t like films with subtitles.’

‘That’s like saying you don’t like films with actors in them. Don’t be ridiculous. What is it you don’t like? The fact that you’re required to read something as well as watch something?’

‘I just don’t really like foreign films.’

‘Everything after Local Bloody Hero has been a foreign film. D’you think Hollywood is a suburb of Birmingham?’

‘Funny.’

He couldn’t believe it when I admitted I’d never actually watched a film with subtitles. But my parents tended to stake ownership of the remote control in the evenings, and Patrick would be about as likely to watch a foreign film as he would be *****ggest we take night classes in crochet. The multiplex in our nearest town only showed the latest shoot’em ups or romantic comedies and was so infested with catcalling kids in hoodies that most people around the town rarely bothered.

‘You have to watch this film, Louisa. In fact, I order you to watch this film.’ Will moved his chair back, and nodded towards the armchair. ‘There. You sit there. Don’t move until it’s over. Never watched a foreign film. For Christ’s sake,’ he muttered.

It was an old film, about a hunchback who inherits a house in the French countryside, and Will said it was based on a famous book, but I can’t say I’d ever heard of it. I spent the first twenty minutes feeling a bit fidgety, irritated by the subtitles and wondering if Will was going to get shirty if I told him I needed the loo.

And then something happened. I stopped thinking about how hard it was listening and reading at the same time, forgot Will’s pill timetable, and whether Mrs Traynor would think I was slacking, and I started to get anxious about the poor man and his family, who were being tricked by unscrupulous neighbours. By the time Hunchback Man died, I was sobbing silently, snot running into my sleeve.

‘So,’ Will said, appearing at my side. He glanced at me slyly. ‘You didn’t enjoy that at all.’

I looked up and found to my surprise that it was dark outside. ‘You’re going to gloat now, aren’t you?’ I muttered, reaching for the box of tissues.

‘A bit. I’m just amazed that you can have reached the ripe old age of – what was it?’

‘Twenty-six.’

‘Twenty-six, and never have watched a film with subtitles.’ He watched me mop my eyes.

I glanced down at the tissue and realized I had no mascara left. ‘I hadn’t realized it was compulsory,’ I grumbled.

‘Okay. So what do you do with yourself, Louisa Clark, if you don’t watch films?’

I balled my tissue in my fist. ‘You want to know what I do when I’m not here?’

‘You were the one who wanted us to get to know each other. So come on, tell me about yourself.’

He had this way of talking where you could never quite be sure that he wasn’t mocking you. I was waiting for the pay-off. ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why do you want to know all of a sudden?’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. It’s hardly a state secret, your social life, is it?’ He had begun to look irritated.

‘I don’t know … ’ I said. ‘I go for a drink at the pub. I watch a bit of telly. I go and watch my boyfriend when he does his running. Nothing unusual.’

‘You watch your boyfriend running.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you don’t run yourself.’

‘No. I’m not really –’ I glanced down at my chest ‘– built for it.’

That made him smile.

‘And what else?’

‘What do you mean, what else?’

‘Hobbies? Travelling? Places you like to go?’

He was beginning to sound like my old careers teacher.

I tried to think. ‘I don’t really have any hobbies. I read a bit. I like clothes.’

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‘Handy,’ he said, dryly.

‘You asked. I’m not really a hobby person.’ My voice had become strangely defensive. ‘I don’t do much, okay? I work and then I go home.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘On the other side of the castle. Renfrew Road.’

He looked blank. Of course he did. There was little human traffic between the two sides of the castle. ‘It’s off the dual carriageway. Near the McDonald’s.’

He nodded, although I’m not sure he really knew where I was talking about.

‘Holidays?’

‘I’ve been to Spain, with Patrick. My boyfriend,’ I added. ‘When I was a kid we only really went to Dorset. Or Tenby. My aunt lives in Tenby.’

‘And what do you want?’

‘What do I want what?’

‘From your life?’

I blinked. ‘That’s a bit deep, isn’t it?’

‘Only generally. I’m not asking you to psychoanalyse yourself. I’m just asking, what do you want? Get married? Pop out some ankle biters? Dream career? Travel the world?’

There was a long pause.

I think I knew my answer would disappoint him even before I said the words aloud. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.’

On Friday we went to the hospital. I’m glad I hadn’t known about Will’s appointment before I arrived that morning, as I would have lain awake all night fretting about having to drive him there. I can drive, yes. But I say I can drive in the same way that I say I can speak French. Yes, I took the relevant exam and passed. But I haven’t used that particular skill more than once a year since I did so. The thought of loading Will and his chair into the adapted minivan and carting him safely to and from the next town filled me with utter terror.

For weeks I had wished that my working day involved some escape from that house. Now I would have done anything just to stay indoors. I located his hospital card amongst the folders of stuff to do with his health – great fat binders divided into ‘transport’, ‘insurance’, ‘living with disability’ and ‘appointments’. I grabbed the card and checked that it had today’s date. A little bit of me was hoping that Will had been wrong.

‘Is your mother coming?’

‘No. She doesn’t come to my appointments.’

I couldn’t hide my surprise. I had thought she would want to oversee every aspect of his treatment.

‘She used to,’ Will said. ‘Now we have an agreement.’

‘Is Nathan coming?’

I was kneeling in front of him. I had been so nervous that I had dropped some of his lunch down his lap and was now trying in vain to mop it up, so that a good patch of his trousers was sopping wet. Will hadn’t said anything, except to tell me to please stop apologizing, but it hadn’t helped my general sense of jitteriness.

‘Why?’

‘No reason.’ I didn’t want him to know how fearful I felt. I had spent much of that morning – time I usually spent cleaning – reading and rereading the instruction manual for the chairlift but I was still dreading the moment when I was solely responsible for lifting him two feet into the air.

‘Come on, Clark. What’s the problem?’

‘Okay. I just … I just thought it would be easier first time if there was someone else there who knew the ropes.’

‘As opposed to me,’ he said.

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Because I can’t possibly be expected to know anything about my own care?’

‘Do you operate the chairlift?’ I said, baldly. ‘You can tell me exactly what to do, can you?’

He watched me, his gaze level. If he had been spoiling for a fight, he appeared to change his mind. ‘Fair point. Yes, he’s coming. He’s a useful extra pair of hands. Plus I thought you’d work yourself into less of a state if you had him there.’

‘I’m not in a state,’ I protested.

‘Evidently.’ He glanced down at his lap, which I was still mopping with a cloth. I had got the pasta sauce off, but he was soaked. ‘So, am I going as an incontinent?’

‘I’m not finished.’ I plugged in the hairdryer and directed the nozzle towards his crotch.

As the hot air blasted on to his trousers he raised his eyebrows.

‘Yes, well,’ I said. ‘It’s not exactly what I expected to be doing on a Friday afternoon either.’

‘You really are tense, aren’t you?’

I could feel him studying me.

‘Oh, lighten up, Clark. I’m the one having scalding hot air directed at my genitals.’

I didn’t respond. I heard his voice over the roar of the hairdryer.

‘Come on, what’s the worst that could happen – I end up in a wheelchair?’

It may sound stupid, but I couldn’t help but laugh. It was the closest Will had come to actually trying to make me feel better.

The car looked like a normal people carrier from outside, but when the rear passenger door was unlocked a ramp descended from the side and lowered to the ground. With Nathan looking on, I guided Will’s outside chair (he had a separate one for travelling) squarely on to the ramp, checked the electrical lock-down brake, and programmed it to slowly lift him up into the car. Nathan slid into the other passenger seat, belted him and secured the wheels. Trying to stop my hands from trembling, I released the handbrake and drove slowly down the drive towards the hospital.

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Away from home, Will appeared to shrink a little. It was chilly outside, and Nathan and I had bundled him up into his scarf and thick coat, but still he grew quieter, his jaw set, somehow diminished by the greater space of his surroundings. Every time I looked into my rear-view mirror (which was often – I was terrified even with Nathan there that somehow the chair would break loose from its moorings) he was gazing out of the window, his expression impenetrable. Even when I stalled or braked too hard, which I did several times, he just winced a little and waited while I sorted myself out.

By the time we reached the hospital I had actually broken out into a fine sweat. I drove around the hospital car park three times, too afraid to reverse into any but the largest of spaces, until I could sense that the two men were beginning to lose patience. Then, finally, I lowered the ramp and Nathan helped Will’s chair out on to the tarmac.

‘Good job,’ Nathan said, clapping me on the back as he let himself out, but I found it hard to believe it had been.

There are things you don’t notice until you accompany someone with a wheelchair. One is how rubbish most pavements are, pockmarked with badly patched holes, or just plain uneven. Walking slowly next to Will as he wheeled himself along, I noticed how every uneven slab caused him to jolt painfully, or how often he had to steer carefully round some potential obstacle. Nathan pretended not to notice, but I saw him watching too. Will just looked grim-faced and resolute.

The other thing is how inconsiderate most drivers are. They park up against the cutouts on the pavement, or so close together that there is no way for a wheelchair to actually cross the road. I was shocked, a couple of times even tempted to leave some rude note tucked into a windscreen wiper, but Nathan and Will seemed used to it. Nathan pointed out a suitable crossing place and, each of us flanking Will, we finally crossed.

Will had not said a single word since leaving the house.

The hospital itself was a gleaming low-rise building, the immaculate reception area more like that of some modernistic hotel, perhaps testament to private insurance. I held back as Will told the receptionist his name, and then followed him and Nathan down a long corridor. Nathan was carrying a huge backpack that contained anything that Will might be likely to need during his short visit, from beakers to spare clothes. He had packed it in front of me that morning, detailing every possible eventuality. ‘I guess it’s a good thing we don’t have to do this too often,’ he had said, catching my appalled expression.

I didn’t follow him into the appointment. Nathan and I sat on the comfortable chairs outside the consultant’s room. There was no hospital smell, and there were fresh flowers in a vase on the windowsill. Not just any old flowers, either. Huge exotic things that I didn’t know the name of, artfully arranged in minimalist clumps.

‘What are they doing in there?’ I said after we had been there half an hour.

Nathan looked up from his book. ‘It’s just his six-month check-up.’

‘What, to see if he’s getting any better?’

Nathan put his book down. ‘He’s not getting any better. It’s a spinal cord injury.’

‘But you do physio and stuff with him.’

‘That’s to try and keep his physical con***ion up – to stop him atrophying and his bones demineralizing, his legs pooling, that kind of thing.’

When he spoke again, his voice was gentle, as if he thought he might disappoint me. ‘He’s not going to walk again, Louisa. That only happens in Hollywood movies. All we’re doing is trying to keep him out of pain, and keep up whatever range of movement he has.’

‘Does he do this stuff for you? The physio stuff? He doesn’t seem to want to do anything that I suggest.’

Nathan wrinkled his nose. ‘He does it, but I don’t think his heart’s in it. When I first came, he was pretty determined. He’d come pretty far in rehab, but after a year with no improvement I think he found it pretty tough to keep believing it was worth it.’

‘Do you think he should keep trying?’

Nathan stared at the floor. ‘Honestly? He’s a C5/6 quadriplegic. That means nothing works below about here …’ He placed a hand on the upper part of his chest. ‘They haven’t worked out how to fix a spinal cord yet.’

I stared at the door, thinking about Will’s face as we drove along in the winter sunshine, the beaming face of the man on the skiing holiday. ‘There are all sorts of medical advances taking place, though, right? I mean … somewhere like this … they must be working on stuff all the time.’

‘It’s a pretty good hospital,’ he said evenly.

‘Where there’s life, and all that?’

Nathan looked at me, then back at his book. ‘Sure,’ he said.

I went to get a coffee at a quarter to three, on Nathan’s say so. He said these appointments could go on for some time, and that he would hold the fort until I got back. I dawdled a little in the reception area, flicking through the magazines in the newsagent’s, lingering over chocolate bars.

Perhaps predictably, I got lost trying to find my way back to the corridor and had to ask several nurses where I should go, two of whom didn’t even know. When I got there, the coffee cooling in my hand, the corridor was empty. As I drew closer, I could see the consultant’s door was ajar. I hesitated outside, but I could hear Mrs Traynor’s voice in my ears all the time now, criticizing me for leaving him. I had done it again.

‘So we’ll see you in three months’ time, Mr Traynor,’ a voice was saying. ‘I’ve adjusted those anti-spasm meds and I’ll make sure someone calls you with the results of the tests. Probably Monday.’

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I heard Will’s voice. ‘Can I get these from the pharmacy downstairs?’

‘Yes. Here. They should be able to give you some more of those too.’

A woman’s voice. ‘Shall I take that folder?’

I realized they must be about to leave. I knocked, and someone called for me to come in. Two sets of eyes swivelled towards me.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the consultant, rising from his chair. ‘I thought you were the physio.’

‘I’m Will’s … helper,’ I said, hanging on to the door. Will was braced forward in his chair as Nathan pulled down his shirt. ‘Sorry – I thought you were done.’

‘Just give us a minute, will you, Louisa?’ Will’s voice cut into the room.

Muttering my apologies I backed out, my face burning.

It wasn’t the sight of Will’s uncovered body that had shocked me, slim and scarred as it was. It wasn’t the vaguely irritated look of the consultant, the same sort of look as Mrs Traynor gave me day after day – a look that made me realize I was still the same blundering eejit, even if I did earn a higher hourly rate.

No, it was the livid red lines scoring Will’s wrists, the long, jagged scars that couldn’t be disguised, no matter how swiftly Nathan pulled down Will’s sleeves.

6

The snow came so suddenly that I left home under a bright blue sky and not half an hour later I was headed past a castle that looked like a cake decoration, surrounded by a layer of thick white icing.

I trudged up the drive, my footsteps muffled and my toes already numb, shivering under my too-thin Chinese silk coat. A whirl of thick white flakes emerged from an iron-grey infinity, almost obscuring Granta House, blotting out sound, and slowing the world to an unnatural pace. Beyond the neatly trimmed hedge cars drove past with a newfound caution, pedestrians slipped and squealed on the pavements. I pulled my scarf up over my nose and wished I had worn something more suitable than ballet pumps and a velvet minidress.

To my surprise it wasn’t Nathan who opened the door, but Will’s father.

‘He’s in bed,’ he said, glancing up from under the porch. ‘He’s not too good. I was just wondering whether to call the doctor.’

‘Where’s Nathan?’

‘Morning off. Of course, it would be today. Bloody agency nurse came and went in six seconds flat. If this snow keeps on I’m not sure what we’ll do later.’ He shrugged, as if these things couldn’t be helped, and disappeared back down the corridor, apparently relieved that he no longer had to be responsible. ‘You know what he needs, yes?’ he called over his shoulder.

I took off my coat and shoes and, as I knew Mrs Traynor was in court (she marked her dates on a diary in Will’s kitchen), I put my wet socks over a radiator to dry. A pair of Will’s were in the clean-washing basket, so I put them on. They looked comically large on me but it was heaven to have warm, dry feet. Will didn’t respond when I called out, so after a while I made him up a drink, knocked quietly and poked my head round the door. In the dim light I could just make out the shape under the duvet. He was fast asleep.

I took a step backwards, closed the door behind me, and began working my way through the morning’s tasks.

My mother seemed to glean an almost physical satisfaction from a well-ordered house. I had been vacuuming and cleaning daily for a month now, and I still couldn’t see the attraction. I suspected there would never be a point in my life when I wouldn’t prefer somebody else to do it.

But on a day like today, when Will was confined to bed, and the world seemed to have stilled outside, I could also see there was a kind of me***ative pleasure in working my way from one end of the annexe to the other. While I dusted and polished, I took the radio from room to room with me, keeping the volume low so that I didn’t disturb Will. Periodically I poked my head round the door, just to see that he was breathing, and it was only when we got to one o’clock and he still hadn’t woken up that I started to feel a little anxious.

I filled the log basket, noting that several inches of snow had now settled. I made Will a fresh drink, and then knocked. When I knocked again, I did so loudly.

‘Yes?’ His voice was hoarse, as if I had woken him.

‘It’s me.’ When he didn’t respond, I said, ‘Louisa. Am I okay to come in?’

‘I’m hardly doing the Dance of the Seven Veils.’

The room was shadowed, the curtains still drawn. I walked in, letting my eyes adjust to the light. Will was on one side, one arm bent in front of him as if to prop himself up, as he had been before when I looked in. Sometimes it was easy to forget he would not be able to turn over by himself. His hair stuck up on one side, and a duvet was tucked neatly around him. The smell of warm, unwashed male filled the room – not unpleasant, but still a little startling as part of a working day.

‘What can I do? Do you want your drink?’

‘I need to change position.’

I put the drink down on a chest of drawers, and walked over to the bed. ‘What … what do you want me to do?’

He swallowed carefully, as if it were painful. ‘Lift and turn me, then raise the back of the bed. Here … ’ He nodded for me to come closer. ‘Put your arms under mine, link your hands behind my back and then pull back. Keep your backside on the bed and that way you shouldn’t strain your lower back.’

I couldn’t pretend this wasn’t a bit weird. I reached around him, the scent of him filling my nostrils, his skin warm against mine. I could not have been in any closer unless I had begun nibbling on his ear. The thought made me mildly hysterical, and I struggled to keep myself together.

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‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ I took a breath, linked my hands, and adjusted my position until I felt I had him securely. He was broader than I had expected, somehow heavier. And then, on a count of three, I pulled back.

‘Jesus,’ he exclaimed, into my shoulder.

‘What?’ I nearly dropped him.

‘Your hands are bloody freezing.’

‘Yes. Well, if you bothered to get out of bed, you’d know that it’s actually snowing outside.’

I was half joking, but now I realized his skin was hot under his T-shirt – an intense heat that seemed to come from deep within him. He groaned slightly as I adjusted him against the pillow, and I tried to make my movements as slow and gentle as possible. He pointed out the remote control device that would bring his head and shoulders up. ‘Not too much, though,’ he murmured. ‘A bit dizzy.’

I turned on the bedside light, ignoring his vague protest, so that I could see his face. ‘Will – are you okay?’ I had to say it twice before he answered me.

‘Not my best day.’

‘Do you need painkillers?’

‘Yes … strong ones.’

‘Maybe some paracetamol?’

He lay back against the cool pillow with a sigh.

I gave him the beaker, watched him swallow.

‘Thank you,’ he said afterwards, and I felt suddenly uneasy.

Will never thanked me for anything.

He closed his eyes, and for a while I just stood in the doorway and watched him, his chest rising and falling under his T-shirt, his mouth slightly open. His breathing was shallow, and perhaps a little more laboured than on other days. But I had never seen him out of his chair, and I wasn’t sure whether it was something to do with the pressure of lying down.

‘Go,’ he muttered.

I left.

I read my magazine, lifting my head only to watch the snow settle thickly around the house, creeping up the window sills in powdery landscapes. Mum sent me a text message at 12.30pm, telling me that my father couldn’t get the car down the road. ‘Don’t set out for home without ringing us first,’ she instructed. I wasn’t sure what she thought she was going to do – send Dad out with a sledge and a St Bernard?

I listened to the local news on the radio, the motorway snarl-ups, train stoppages and temporary school closures that the unexpected blizzard had brought with it. I went back into Will’s room, and looked at him again. I didn’t like his colour. He was pale, high points of something bright on each cheek.

‘Will?’ I said softly.

He didn’t stir.

‘Will?’

I began to feel the faint stirrings of panic. I said his name twice more, loudly. There was no response. Finally, I leant over him. There was no obvious movement in his face, nothing I could see in his chest. His breath. I should be able to feel his breath. I put my face down close to his, trying to detect an out breath. When I couldn’t, I reached out a hand and touched his face gently.

He flinched, his eyes snapping open, just inches from my own.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, jumping back.

He blinked, glancing around the room, as if he had been somewhere far from home.

‘It’s Lou,’ I said, when I wasn’t sure if he had recognized me.

His expression was one of mild exasperation. ‘I know.’

‘Do you want some soup?’

‘No. Thank you.’ He closed his eyes.

‘More painkillers?’

There was a faint sheen of sweat on his cheekbone. I put my hand out, his duvet felt vaguely hot and sweaty. It made me nervous.

‘Is there something I should be doing? I mean, if Nathan can’t get here?’

‘No … I’m fine,’ he murmured, and closed his eyes again.

I went through the folder, trying to work out if I was missing something. I opened the medical cabinet, the boxes of rubber gloves and gauze dressings, and realized I had no idea at all what I should do with any of it. I rang the intercom to speak to Will’s father, but the ringing sound disappeared into an empty house. I could hear it echoing beyond the annexe door.

I was about to ring Mrs Traynor when the back door opened, and Nathan stepped in, wrapped in layers of bulky clothing, a woollen scarf and hat almost obscuring his head. He brought with him a whoosh of cold air and a light flurry of snow.

‘Hey,’ he said, shaking the snow off his boots and slamming the door behind him.

It felt like the house had suddenly woken from a dreamlike state.

‘Oh, thank God you’re here,’ I said. ‘He’s not well. He’s been asleep most of the morning and he’s hardly drunk anything. I didn’t know what to do.’

Nathan shrugged off his coat. ‘Had to walk all the way here. The buses have stopped running.’

I set about making him some tea, as he went to check on Will.

He reappeared before the kettle had even finished boiling. ‘He’s burning up,’ he said. ‘How long has he been like this?’

‘All morning. I did think he was hot, but he said he just wanted to sleep.’

‘Jesus. All morning? Didn’t you know he can’t regulate his own temperature?’ He pushed past me and began rummaging around in the medicine cabinet. ‘Antibiotics. The strong ones.’ He held up a jar and emptied one into the pestle and mortar, grinding it furiously.

I hovered behind him. ‘I gave him a paracetamol.’

‘Might as well have given him an Opal Fruit.’

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‘I didn’t know. Nobody said. I’ve been wrapping him up.’

‘It’s in the bloody folder. Look, Will doesn’t sweat like we do. In fact he doesn’t sweat at all from the point of his injury downwards. It means if he gets a slight chill his temperature gauge goes haywire. Go find the fan. We’ll move that in there until he cools down. And a damp towel, to put around the back of his neck. We won’t be able to get him to a doctor until the snow stops. Bloody agency nurse. They should have picked this up in the morning.’

Nathan was crosser than I’d ever seen him. He was no longer really even talking to me.

I ran for the fan.

It took almost forty minutes for Will’s temperature to return to an acceptable level. While we waited for the extra-strong fever medication to take effect, I placed a towel over his forehead and another around his neck, as Nathan instructed. We stripped him down, covered his chest with a fine cotton sheet, and set the fan to play over it. Without sleeves, the scars on his arms were clearly exposed. We all pretended I couldn’t see them.

Will endured all this attention in near silence, answering Nathan’s questions with a yes or no, so indistinct sometimes that I wasn’t sure if he knew what he was saying. I realized, now I could see him in the light, that he looked really, properly ill and I felt terrible for having failed to grasp it. I said sorry until Nathan told me it had become irritating.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘You need to watch what I’m doing. It’s possible you may need to do this alone later.’

I didn’t feel I could protest. But I found it hard not to feel squeamish as Nathan peeled down the waist of Will’s pyjama bottoms, revealing a pale strip of bare stomach, and carefully removed the gauze dressing around the little tube in his abdomen, cleaning it gently and replacing the dressing. He showed me how to change the bag on the bed, explained why it must always be lower than Will’s body, and I was surprised at how matter-of-fact I was about walking out of the room with the pouch of warm fluid. I was glad that Will wasn’t really watching me – not just because he would have made some sharp comment, but because I felt that me witnessing some part of this intimate routine would in some way have embarrassed him too.

‘And that’s it,’ Nathan said. Finally, an hour later, Will lay dozing, lying on fresh cotton sheets and looking, if not exactly well, then not scarily ill.

‘Let him sleep. But wake him after a couple of hours and make sure you get the best part of a beaker of fluids into him. More fever meds at five, okay? His temperature will probably shoot up again in the last hour, but nothing more before five.’

I scribbled everything down on a notepad. I was afraid of getting anything wrong.

‘Now you’re going to need to repeat what we just did, this evening. You’re okay with that?’ Nathan wrapped himself up like an Inuit and headed out into the snow. ‘Just read the folder. And don’t panic. Any problems, you just call me. I’ll talk you through it all. I’ll get back here again if I really have to.’

I stayed in Will’s room after Nathan left. I was too afraid not to. In the corner was an old leather armchair with a reading light, perhaps dating from Will’s previous life, and I curled up on it with a book of short stories that I had pulled from the bookcase.

It was strangely peaceful in that room. Through the crack in the curtains I could see the outside world, blanketed in white, still and beautiful. Inside it was warm and silent, only the odd tick and hiss of the central heating to interrupt my thoughts. I read, and occasionally I glanced up and checked Will sleeping peacefully and I realized that there had never been a point in my life before where I had just sat in silence and done nothing. You don’t grow up used to silence in a house like mine, with its never-ending vacuuming, television blaring, and shrieking. During the rare moments that the television was off, Dad would put on his old Elvis records and play them at full blast. A cafe too is a constant buzz of noise and clatter.

Here, I could hear my thoughts. I could almost hear my heartbeat. I realized, to my surprise, that I quite liked it.

At five, my mobile phone signalled a text message. Will stirred, and I leapt out of the chair, anxious to get it before it disturbed him.

No trains. Is there any chance you could stay over tonight?

Nathan cannot do it. Camilla Traynor.

I didn’t really think about it before I typed back.

No problem.

I rang my parents and told them that I would stay over. My mother sounded relieved. When I told her I was going to get paid for sleeping over, she sounded overjoyed.

‘Did you hear that, Bernard?’ she said, her hand half over the phone. ‘They’re paying her to sleep now.’

I could hear my father’s exclamation. ‘Praise the Lord. She’s found her dream career.’

I sent a text message to Patrick, telling him that I had been asked to stay at work and I would ring him later. The message came back within seconds.

Going cross-country snow running tonight.

Good practice for Norway! X P.

I wondered how it was possible for someone to get so excited at the thought of jogging through sub-zero temperatures in a vest and pants.

Will slept. I cooked myself some food, and defrosted some soup in case he wanted some later. I got the log fire going in case he felt well enough to go into the living room. I read another of the short stories and wondered how long it was since I had bought myself a book. I had loved reading as a child, but I couldn’t remember reading anything except magazines since. Treen was the reader. It was almost as if by picking up a book I felt like I was invading her patch. I thought about her and Thomas disappearing to university and realized I still didn’t know whether it made me feel happy or sad – or something a bit complicated in between.

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Nathan rang at seven. He seemed relieved that I was staying over.

‘I couldn’t raise Mr Traynor. I even rang their landline number, but it went straight through to answerphone.’

‘Yeah. Well. He’ll be gone.’

‘Gone?’

I felt a sudden instinctive panic at the idea that it would be just Will and me in the house all night. I was afraid of getting something fundamental wrong again, of jeopardizing Will’s health. ‘Should I call Mrs Traynor, then?’

There was a short silence on the other end of the phone. ‘No. Best not.’

‘But –’

‘Look, Lou, he often … he often goes somewhere else when Mrs T stays over in town.’

It took me a minute or two to grasp what he was saying.

‘Oh.’

‘It’s just good that you’re there, that’s all. If you’re sure Will’s looking better, I’ll be back first thing in the morning.’

There are normal hours, and then there are invalid hours, where time stalls and slips, where life – real life – seems to exist at one remove. I watched some television, ate, and cleared up the kitchen, drifting around the annexe in silence. Finally, I let myself back into Will’s room.

He stirred as I closed the door, half lifting his head. ‘What time is it, Clark?’ His voice was slightly muffled by the pillow.

‘Quarter past eight.’

He let his head drop, and digested this. ‘Can I have a drink?’

There was no sharpness to him now, no edge. It was as if being ill had finally made him vulnerable. I gave him a drink, and turned on the bedside light. I perched on the side of his bed, and felt his forehead, as my mother might have done when I was a child. He was still a little warm, but nothing like he had been.

‘Cool hands.’

‘You complained about them earlier.’

‘Did I?’ He sounded genuinely surprised.

‘Would you like some soup?’

‘No.’

‘Are you comfortable?’

I never knew how much discomfort he was in, but I suspected it was more than he let on.

‘The other side would be good. Just roll me. I don’t need to sit up.’

I climbed across the bed and moved him over, as gently as I could. He no longer radiated a sinister heat, just the ordinary warmth of a body that had spent time under a duvet.

‘Can I do anything else?’

‘Shouldn’t you be heading home?’

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’m staying over.’

Outside, the last of the light had long been extinguished. The snow was still falling. Where it caught the porch glow through the window it was bathed in a pale-gold, melancholy light. We sat there in peaceful silence, watching its hypnotic fall.

‘Can I ask you something?’ I said, finally. I could see his hands on top of the sheet. It seemed so strange that they should look so ordinary, so strong, and yet be so useless.

‘I suspect you’re going to.’

‘What happened?’ I kept wondering about the marks on his wrists. It was the one question I couldn’t ask directly.

He opened one eye. ‘How did I get like this?’

When I nodded, he closed his eyes again. ‘Motorbike accident. Not mine. I was an innocent pedestrian.’

‘I thought it would be skiing or bungee jumping or something.’

‘Everyone does. God’s little joke. I was crossing the road outside my home. Not this place,’ he said. ‘My London home.’

I stared at the books in his bookshelf. Among the novels, the well-thumbed Penguin paperbacks, were business titles: Corporate Law, TakeOver, directories of names I did not recognize.

‘And there was no way you could carry on with your job?’

‘No. Nor the apartment, the holidays, the life … I believe you met my ex-girlfriend.’ The break in his voice couldn’t disguise the bitterness. ‘But I should apparently be grateful, as for some time they didn’t think I was going to live at all.’

‘Do you hate it? Living here, I mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there any way you might be able to live in London again?’

‘Not like this, no.’

‘But you might improve. I mean, Nathan said there are loads of advances in this kind of injury.’

Will closed his eyes again.

I waited, and then I adjusted the pillow behind his head, and the duvet around his chest. ‘Sorry,’ I said, sitting upright. ‘If I ask too many questions. Do you want me to leave?’

‘No. Stay for a bit. Talk to me.’ He swallowed. His eyes opened again and his gaze slid up to mine. He looked unbearably tired. ‘Tell me something good.’

I hesitated a moment, then I leant back against the pillows beside him. We sat there in the near dark, watching the briefly illuminated flakes of snow disappear into the black night.

‘You know … I used to say that to my Dad,’ I said, finally. ‘But if I told you what he used to say back, you’d think I was insane.’

‘More than I do?’

‘When I had a nightmare or was sad or frightened about something, he used to sing me … ’ I started to laugh. ‘Oh … I can’t.’

‘Go on.’

‘He used to sing me the “Molahonkey Song”.’

‘The what?’

‘The “Molahonkey Song”. I used to think everyone knew it.’